I’ll Be Right There, by Shin Kyung-suk

Translated by Sora Kim-Russell

(2010, translated 2013)

Other Press

(Novel) 

Shin Kyung-Suk tells the story of a group of friends who came of age in the 80s and 90s in South Korea. The primary narrator is Yoon, a young woman who comes from the country and finds it difficult to adjust to art school and Seoul. Her high school years were marred by tragedy. Her mother, who was battling cancer, sent Yoon away to live with her older affianced sister so that she would not have to feel that her life was dominated by her mother’s illness. Perhaps not surprisingly, her mother’s attempt to protect her daughter sends Yoon into a depression and drives a wedge between her, her older sister, and her father. At university, she meets Yoon Mira, a quiet and intense young woman who appears to be in love with Myungsuh, a lost soul who wants to be a writer and who quickly falls for the narrator. Yoon has another admirer, Dahn, who is a poor boy she left behind in high school who is banking on his two-year mandatory service in the military to make a man of him and give him focus. The characters are connected at times by the most tenuous of threads. Among the strongest are Professor Yoon and Nak Sujang. Professor Yoon is a charismatic professor who acts as a mentor to the children, leavening his advice with allusions to the greats of Western literature and stories of the Christian saints. As central as he is to the story, he too, cuts himself off from any interaction with his students when he becomes ill. Nak Sujang is the most dynamic character, though his role is peripheral. He knew he wanted to become an architect from an early age. In fact, he calls himself “Nak Sajang” the Korean phrase for falling water” because he admires Frank Lloyd Wright. Though he does not earn the marks to be admitted to architectural studies, he never gives up. He also acts as the guide to the group, literally. Believing that a true architect must know every feature of the land, he shares his encyclopedic knowledge of Seoul’s streets, buildings, and natural surroundings. Each of the characters is carrying the burden of great trauma and they are all trying to find their way through the violent political upheavals and protests that take place at or near their school. Shin reports she intends the story to be “universal,” and therefore provides no dates and avoids referencing any specific historical events, yet Shin directs our attention to the large number of students who “disappeared” during this period as well as suspiciously large numbers of South Korean soldiers who died under mysterious circumstances–phenomena that are unique to Korea’s Pro-Democracy Movement. In the end, the lack of clues to time is disorienting. Shin’s story also features death upon death. The overall effect is emotionally exhausting, though there is some hint as to the cause of the heavy emotional burdens: the prevalence of the family name and given name “Yoon.” Shin’s use of the name for three unrelated characters reminds us of the interconnectedness of families on the Korean peninsula, and that the most wounded of the characters make their way back to their ancestral homes before finding peace. Shin may be pointing out that the modern push to send children to the big cities to pursue a Western-style education placed additional psycho-emotional burdens on families that had already lost so much through colonization, war, and the division of the nation.

“I got caught in a wave of protesters and was pressed up against the glass of the Koreana Hotel, unable to move. All of the stores in the area had their metal roll-down gates shut tight. Even the glass doors that led into the hotel were firmly locked. The hotel employees were watching the commotion in the streets from inside. Just a few steps away was the underpass. If I could make it to the underpass, I could cross to the other side, and I took a step towards it. Just then, a teargas canister exploded overhead, and a huge crowd of protesters surged into the underpass to try to avoid it.” (77)